Elizabeth Warren’s Warning: Chamber of Commerce will make the Supreme Court its subsidiary

During a speech last week at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy National Convention, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren admonished her audience against the Chamber of Commerce’s growing influence on the Supreme Court. “Take a look at the win rate of the Chamber of Commerce,” “According to the Constitution Accountability Center, the chamber moved from a 43 percent win rate during the very conservative Berger court to a 56 percent win rate under the very conservative Rehnquist court. And now they are at a 70 percent win rate under the Roberts court.”

The Chamber of Commerce which fronts as the voice for American small business but operates as the largest anti-business/finance reform lobbying force in Washington has fought every Wall Street reform proposed since the financial collapse of 2008. Laws that would increase the transparency of executive compensation, make financial statements more reliable and accounting fraud more difficult to hide have all been fought by the Chamber’s team of lobbyists and millions of dollars contributed by CEOs from the largest corporations who want to keep their lobbying agenda secret.

In 2012 alone the Chamber of Commerce funneled over $100 million into the election campaigns of politicians who would do their bidding making the Chamber one of the biggest players in the money-access-power nexus that came to light during the 2012 Elections.

Other recent campaigns include the Chamber’s efforts to squash, and today, rollback regulations established under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a law passed in 2002 designed to enhance transparency and accounting standards for public company boards and public accounting firms in the wake of the Enron, Tyco and WorldCom scandals. Before his ouster from AIG in 2005, Maurice Greenberg diverted $23 million from the Starr Foundation bankrolling the Chamber in its push against regulations effected by Sarbanes-Oxley. Starr Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the United States, a non-profit that funds research and education programs in a number of areas, “including education, medicine and healthcare, human needs, public policy, culture and the environment”. The Chamber’s decade-long anti-regulation campaign is really about limiting the control shareholders have over their executives, limiting corporate disclosures to investors, and protecting the secrecy of corporate boardrooms while preventing shareholders and the public from holding the same board rooms accountable.

Then there was the 2009 Chamber funded national ad blitzkrieg attacking the Affordable Health Care Act. The National Journal later revealed how deceitful of the Chamber’s ad campaign was when it reported that major insurers

including Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint had funneled between $10 million and $20 million to the U.S. Chamber to fund the campaign. Meanwhile, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade association, continued to public voice support for reform.

Another memorable 2009 campaign, one that put Elizabeth Warren in the cross hairs was the Chamber’s “Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Agency”. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency was conceived by Warren in a 2007 article she wrote in the Democracy Journal. Her idea was to create and agency that would have the authority and accountability to supervise, examine, and enforce consumer financial protection laws. The Chamber carried out an aggressive ad campaign featuring small business owners complaining that such an agency would crack down on small businesses that offer store credit to customers. Because of laws that do not require 501(c)3s like the Chamber to report donors the banks and credit card companies that financed the multi-million dollar ad and lobbying efforts were never disclosed.

Secrecy and anonymity are the trademark of the Chamber of Commerce. Ruling elites pay the non-profit hundreds of millions a year to secure the lucrative advantages they seek. But the drive for power is ceaseless within the ruling class. Nothing short of total control of all branches of the State will satisfy the appetites of those who wield power behind closed doors. The Chamber of Commerce and the corporations it represents from the shadows have already hijacked the legislative process, elections and government policy. It has already diffused its influence throughout “the least dangerous branch” as the increasing number of rulings favoring Big Business shows. Elizabeth Warren’s warning is prescient. Continuing her speech last week she said, “Follow this pro-business trend to its obvious conclusion and you will end up with a Supreme Court that’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce.”